Hello and welcome to another thread in which I pretend to know what I'm talking about. It's been a while since I last did one of these. This time, I'll discuss the Royal Navy's G and H class destroyers.

HMS Gallandat sea, 1938

"G and H? What kind of name is that for a class?"

The Royal Navy used a naming scheme for their smaller ships where a class was named after a letter, and each ship in the class had a name starting with that letter. Subsequent classes had subsequent letters in the alphabet. As such the G and H class were preceded by the E and F class, and succeeded by the I class.

There were a further six ships built to the G and H pattern, ordered by the Brazilian navy but requisitioned by the Royal Navy at the outbreak of WWII. These ships are counted among the H class: Harvester, Harvant, Havelock, Hesperus, Highlander and Hurricane.

Grenville and Hardy were completed as destroyer leaders, and built to a slightly different spec as the other G and H ships. They were larger, heavier and had a heavier armament. More powerful machinery meant that they could still keep up with their lighter classmates. Beyond that there were some variations among the G and H classes in terms of design and armament, as the class was used as a testbed for several new types of armaments. For example, Glowworm carried experimental quintuple torpedo launchers where her sisters carried quads, and Hereward for some time carried a double 4.7" gun mount in place of the B turret where her sisters carried only single gun mounts.

During the war many G and H class ships had their aft torpedo launcher removed and replaced with a 3" / 12pdr AA mount, with additional AA mounts installed in various locations on the ships.

For the purpose of this thread I will discuss the G and H class as-built, with their original armament. I will not go into too much detail where Hardy and Grenville are concerned, as those are different hulls entirely.

HMS Grafton, date unknown

Tonnage:

1370 tons standard load, 1890 tons full load.

According to Fr05ty and dseehafer's formulas this would give us roughly 9600 HP for the stock hull and 12000 HP fully upgraded. These are small ships and their tonnage and hitpoint values reflect that.

Armor:

These are destroyers. They don't have armor. Just plating with an arbitrary thickness which depends on tiering.

Main armament:

4x 4.7" QF Mk IX

These ships were built with four 120mm guns in single mounts, fitted in two superfiring pairs fore and aft. These are effectively the same guns as mounted on the B%C5%82yskawica, except where the latter fires sngle-piece cased ammunition these fire separate projectile-and-bag ammunition. Ballistically they are the same weapons, though.

Between January and March 1937 Hereward carried a single 4.7" twin mount in place of the B mount. These twin mounts were a test bed for the main armament of what would become the Tribal class destroyers.

Torpedoes:

2x 4 21" (533mm) tubes

Ah, now we come to the heart of the matter. As built, the G and H class were torpedo boats first and foremost. This is reflected in a rather heavy torpedo armament of eight tubes firing the Mk IX, Mk IX* or Mk IX** fish. There were several revisions of the Mk IX, with ranges between 9600m and 13700m, at speeds in between 30 and 41 knots though I'm sure these could be tuned for shorter ranges at higher speed if necessary.

These torpedoes are found in game starting with the Mk IX on Emerald and Leander up to the Mk IX** on Edinburgh and Neptune. These torpedoes have the following in-game stats:

Tiering would depend on which torpedoes WG fits to these ships, but even the Mk IX option already makes them a rather powerful torpedo boat.

HMS Glowworm served as a testbed for experimental quintuple tubes, thus giving her an even heavier torpedo armament of 10, rather than the 8 her sisters had.

Anti-aircraft armament:

As-built the G and H class destroyers had two 12.7mm machine guns. This was later upgraded when the aft torpedo mount was replaced by a single 3" AA gun, and the addition of four to eight 20mm Oerlikon mounts. Even in this 'upgraded' state you won't shoot down many planes with what amounts to a token AA suite, and you'd be giving up half your torpedo armament. Not worth it.

Speed:

35.5 knots

These aren't very fast ships by any standard. At higher tiers you'll start running into cruisers that go faster. Still, with speed flag and speed boost you should be able to make almost 40 knots, which isn't particularly slow either. It's just too bad you'll be fighting destroyers that can do 40 knots without flag or boost.

Concealment:

This is where the good news happens. These are tiny ships, about the size of Umikaze. I suspect their concealment ratings would be very similar to the sneaky Japanese ninja.

HMS Hostile in 1936

Conclusion:

We are very likely to see these ships in game when the British destroyers land. At which tier though I can only guess. I can see a base G / H class destroyer post-refit at tier 5, with 4x 120mm guns and a single quad torpedo launcher dropping Mk IXs, but I can also see a pre-refit G / H class based on Glowworm at tier 8 with 2x quintuple tubes firing Mk IX**s. It all depends on which plan WG introduces and what soft stats they're going to give her.